ACORN knew of voter fraud, ex-worker says

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- A former employee of an affiliate of ACORN testified yesterday that the community group knew that most new voter-registration forms it had gathered were fraudulent.

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- A former employee of an affiliate of ACORN testified yesterday that the community group knew that most new voter-registration forms it had gathered were fraudulent.

"Forty percent was OK," Anita Moncrief said, referring to the number of bona fide registrations that officials at the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now believed was acceptable.

Moncrief, 29, was the star witness yesterday in a Commonwealth Court case brought by the state Republican Party and others who are asking a judge to step in and prevent voter fraud.

Moncrief also testified that, in November 2007, she was given a massive database of Barack Obama donors who had already reached the maximum that they are allowed to give. Her task was to cull it for potential donors to ACORN.

Moncrief said that she received the database from her supervisor who insisted the Obama campaign had provided it.

Obama has said that ACORN has played no role in his presidential campaign.

John McCain's campaign seized on the testimony to suggest that Obama was lying.

"At the last presidential debate, in front of 60 million people, Barack Obama said his campaign was not involved with ACORN," Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, said in a statement. "We now know that Barack Obama's campaign was working hand-in-glove with an organization reportedly under investigation by the FBI and in more than a dozen states."

ACORN has been working in battleground states, including Ohio, to help mostly minorities and the poor register to vote for the first time. But the group, said Moncrief, barely trained its workers and would fire employees if they did not meet a quota of 20 new voter applicants daily. And, if they were caught committing fraud, the group "threw them under the bus" as scapegoats, Moncrief said.

Moncrief said she worked as a development associate for Project Vote in Washington from 2005 until early this year, but that the group was so closely aligned with its sister organization, ACORN, that they were one and the same.

Project Vote national spokesman Michael McDunnah denied that the list came from the Democratic nominee or his campaign. "This is a low-level administrative assistant who was fired for stealing," he said.

Moncrief was fired in January after using a Project Vote credit card to pay for personal items, which she admitted on the stand.

Moncrief, who lives in Virginia, acknowledged she never worked on the registration drive in Pennsylvania.

Two ACORN officials from Pennsylvania testified the group has policies in place to train new employees and to detect bad applications.